Subject: Re: bug#49878: Emacs Tarball Should Include Uninstall Script

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2021 11:37:52 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> We have "make uninstall" -- why isn't that what's being requested
> here?

Oh, didn't know about that.  Hm...  Yeah, I guess it should do the
trick.  But it's not included in the tarball, I think?  Which was the
request, and I'm still sceptical about doing that, because it looks
pretty dangerous. 

>> I've never understood why any user would say "make install" at all --
>> Emacs works just fine without saying "make install".  Users should just
>> run it from where it was compiled.
>
> The idea is that after "make install" you can delete the source tree.
>
> Also, without installing, the important executables will not
> necessarily be on PATH, so you cannot easily invoke them without using
> a full absolute file name.
>
> Finally, this is a standard Make target that everyone expects (other
> packages don't always work 100% correctly when invoked from the source
> tree).

That's sort of my point -- there's a ton of software out there that
doesn't work unless you install it first.  Emacs is not one of those, so
people think they have to install it to use it.

I wonder whether it'd be practical to put a "Really install? You don't
have to" in the "make install" target.  Probably not.

I think what most people who're futzing around with Emacs git would want
is just to have a target that makes some symlinks from /usr/local/bin
(or whatever) to the current build directory so that emacs/emacsclient
lands in $PATH.  I don't think the size of the source matters most, so
my guess is that few people delete the source tree after "make install".

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no